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Topic: OMG does he like me (Read 306 times)

Dating Despair is a four-part series about why dating in Bangkok, well … sucks. This story is a collection of anecdotes from Thai women who live in the capital and expat women in Bangkok have it hard as well

Dating Despair: Why finding love in Bangkok is hard for Thai women

Belle* is 28 years old and has never been on a date in her life.

One recent afternoon, in a group chat between six Thai women who went to college together, Belle sent a candid photo of a decent-looking man she came across in her diplomatic career.

She sent a message, the kind that has appeared in many thousands of all-girl chats throughout history: “Girls, what should I do? I like him. Help me!”

“Smile at him. Remember, you’re a beautiful, chatty, lovely person!” one friend in the group suggested in the way that one offers advice to a friend that you know is destined for disappointment.

I remember receiving eerily similar messages from my childhood friends, high-school friends, and even former colleagues — poorly taken photos of guys with hopeful captions that illustrate their anticipation and excitement at the possibility of romance — but most of the time, those feelings are left unspoken.

While it has been written countless times that expat women in Bangkok have it hard when it comes to dating (and we’ll be hitting that topic ourselves in just a couple of weeks), when you look around, plenty of lovely, single Thai women don’t seem to be doing any better.

Think about the invisible office girls in ballet flats that you look right through on the BTS, the good girls who live with their parents in the suburbs, or the intense career women who receive more messages on LinkedIn than Tinder.

It’s as if they’re stuck in a romantic limbo. While there are no men courting them, they’re not bold enough when it comes to romance — they simply weren’t raised to assert themselves with the opposite sex. Add that to the idea that Thai men tend to think poorly of aggressive and straightforward women, and you end up with a lot of Thai women who don’t even bother trying.

Ying, 30, said she had had a crush on her current boyfriend long before they went out. Even though he was Korean — and so, perhaps, not so judgmental — she waited for him to make the first move.

“I texted my friend the first day I saw him in class that I liked this guy, but I didn’t even think about speaking to him until he asked me out,” Ying said.

“It’s not that I try to be a traditional Thai lady. Thai women don’t care about what society thinks of them — they just care about what the guy they like thinks of them. I feel that men value the women they ask out more [than the women who ask them out].”

Two days later, Belle updated the chat group that she had failed to talk to the guy in the candid photo and didn’t know if she’d ever see him again.

So, while chatting and giggling to friends about guys you like may be hilarious, the sad truth is that many Thai women seem to put themselves in the relatively hopeless position of playing the waiting game — just praying that the men they like will like them back and take the initiative.